page_title: Gundelia
section_title: Inflorescence
hierarchical_section_title: Gundelia / Description / Inflorescence
caption_attribution_description: Gundelia_Tournefortii
context_page_description: Gundelia is a low to high thistle-like perennial herbaceous plant with latex, spiny compound inflorescences, reminiscent of teasles and eryngos, that contain cream, yellow, greenish, pink, purple or redish-purple disk florets. It is assigned to the daisy family. Flowers can be found from February to May. The stems of this plant dry-out when the seeds are ripe and break free from the underground root, and are then blown away like a tumbleweed, thus spreading the seeds effectively over large areas with little standing vegetation. This plant is native to the eastern Mediterranean and the Middle-East. Opinions differ about the number of species in Gundelia. Sometimes the genus is regarded monotypic, Gundelia tournefortii being a species with a large variability, but other authors distinguish up to nine species, differing in floret color and pubescence. Young stems are cooked and eaten in the Middle-East and are said to taste like a combination of artichoke and asparagus. The plant also contains compounds that have been demonstrated to be effective against a range of ailments.
context_section_description: The stem divides into ten or more branches, each of which is topped by a compound spiny ovoid inflorescence of 4–8 cm in diameter, which may be covered in dense arachnoid hairs. This inflorescence is unusual for members of the family Asteraceae, as each true flowerhead is so far reduced as to only contain one floret, which is surrounded by its own involucre. Five to seven of these monofloral flowerheads combine into secondary flowerheads, each subtended by a spiny bract hardly or substantially longer than the secondary flowerheads, with only the centre floret developing a cypsela, and the surrounding ones only producing pollen. These secondary flowerheads later break free from the globose assembly of flowerheads that sit on the end of each branch of the stem during the tumbleweed-stage. Remarkable for a member of the tribe Cichorieae are also the disk florets, a trait that is further only present in Warionia saharae.
caption: tumbleweed-stage
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